Published Articles
An equitable mortgage of immovable property is a widely used method of creating security against a loan availed from banks and other financial institutions in India. However, it is easily open to fraud.
In the last 140 years, since the inception of equitable mortgage in India, requirements of debt financing, organisation of lending institutions and the character of land markets have undergone a sea-change. To restrain the increasing trend of frauds related to equitable mortgages, critical scrutiny of this form of security has become imperative.
This blog attempts to analyse key aspects of equitable mortgage, including legal principles, reasons for its widespread acceptance, and problems faced by the lenders and the borrowers. It also provides suggestions for reforming the law without affecting the flow of credit to borrowers.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, India faces a serious decline inemployment due to the COVID-19 crisis. An estimated 122 million people lost their jobs during the first quarter of 2020. Streams of migrant workers returned to their villages— often the only fallback option for the millions working in urban informal sectors.
Regardless of their vows to never come back to the cities, the majority of them will likely have to return in order to earn their livelihood. In the present state of affairs, agriculture, the mainstay of rural India, cannot offer them incomes comparable toindustries and construction firms in cities.
Despite its falling share in the economy, agriculture is India’s most important sector. Its contribution to the country’s GDP has decreased from 51.81% in 1950-51 to 15.87% in 2018-19, but it still employs about 42% of the country’s workforce. While increasing shares of secondary and tertiary sectors is a natural phenomenon of economic growth, in India, this has happened without maximizing the potential for growth in agriculture. Per-acre yields of rice and wheat in India are drastically lower than those of other BRICS nations.
Better Maps to Find Treasures
While India has been harnessing remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS) and other geospatial technologies for better governance and planning for a long time now, the lack of a singular, comprehensive national policy has been detrimental towards the effective and widespread use of GIS data and mapping technologies. India ranks 25th in the Countries Geospatial Readiness Index (CGRI) 2019 (bit.ly/3dJQiyV). Governed under six departments, India has a total of 17 national policies, some of which have restrictive and redundant provisions overridden with security concerns.In this context, the new geospatial guidelines released recently by the Department of Science and Technology have the potential of levelling out some of these concerns. These make it easier for individuals, companies, organisations and government agencies to collect, generate, process and use
geospatial data and maps within India without the requirement of any prior approval or security clearance.